A/N: Whohoo! I finally had some time after my mocks to complete this chapter. Enjoy!

It was midnight when Naori received the noticed from a member of the ANBU, whose face was shielded by an ominous cat mask. She had been up reading, despite undergoing another exhaustive day of completing missions and babysitting her nephew, the latter of which—in her opinion—was the more taxing task.

She had expected it to be a message about her list of allocated missions, or perhaps an update about her brother: how him and his wife were faring in their faraway operation in the land of tea.

Somehow, the news of his death didn't shock her as much as she expected it to. Considering how her last update had been close to six months ago, she had already suspected that something had gone wrong. Her mind sank instantly into a state of blankness, as if the sheer, irrevocable reality had sucked out the emotion within her, draining it into some nebulous vacuum.

He was dead.

Of course he was dead.

Then came the pang in the heart, the hurt, the stinging twinge that none of the bereft can suppress, then came the shock, the incredulity, the disbelief and finally that sting in the eye, which only managed to swell, accumulate, proliferate until it shatters the barracks holding back that surging sea of emotion, unleashing the tears.

It started off with one sole drip, then more came and it ran in rivulets, down her cheeks, coalescing, coalescing with other tributaries and before she realized, her countenance had been overflowing with tears.

No. No. No. No. He cannot be dead. Except he his, of course he is. You knew, you knew it all along. Yet you played dumb to yourself—of course you did, because that's what you are, you're a liar, a liar, liar, liar. Just look at what you told Kagami, of course his parents aren't coming back! Just what did you think before?

She had no idea what to do with Kagami; waking him up in the middle of the night doesn't sound like the best idea, she hadn't the heart to tell him the next morning either, or the one after, or the one after the one after that.

No, she concluded. I'll have to keep it from him for a while, perhaps until he's old enough to take it.

She took a deep, yet rugged, breath, then shook her head and got up to get herself a cup of coffee, for she had decided that that it's better to stay awake contemplating about her brother, his life, her time with him, rather than to plunge into a vast array of disjointed, distorted memories, disproportionately filled with hate and regret. Hence she downed her coffee, then stared in stillness through the window in the living room, at the pitch-black streets of the night.

Out of the blue, a solitary figure clad in a fur coat materialized. It appeared, slightly annoyed, as if it were unwilling to be on these streets, especially at this time of the day. As it started to approach her house, its features became clearer and Naori couldn't help but feel a sense of incredulity.

Why the hell was Tobirama Senju on the streets of the Uchiha Compound, in the middle of the night, mystified her. Moreover, his timing could really do with some improvement. She suspected that none of her clansmen would have been pleased to see the most notoriously hostile member of their former arch rival clan wondering around their neighborhood in the dark.

"Uh… Naori?..." Tobirama's voice came from the other side of the door.

"Yes..?"

"I think I may have left some of my files here at your house. You know… during this afternoon… eh… when I was visiting."

"Is this something urgent?"

"Yes, unfortunately, seeing how I'm here at such a late hour."

"Alright then, come in."

When he saw her distressed, teary state and that cup of coffee she had just downed, he looked genuinely concerned.

"I'm sorry, did I interrupt something?" He looked rather apologetic.

"No it's fine. Where did you put them?" She muttered back.

"Uh, I think near the dining table. I'll go get it quickly. Sorry for the disturbance."

"It's okay, really. I'm just… not exactly in the best mood here," Naori shook her head and wandered around the living room, unwilling to look him in the eye, mainly because—well—it was very, very awkward.

"There, I got it," he said as he held up his files. "Once again, sorry for disturbing you this late at night. You see, uh… these files contain the basic layout for Konoha's first ever Chuunin Exams, so retracting them from here is something essential."

"Right, and how did you forget them again?" Naori couldn't help but snort at such an act of carelessness.

"Uh… I have absolutely no idea actually…"

"Whatever."

"Many apologies, I'll leave now."

"Very well then, the next time your brother brings you here for another one of his suspicious errands, don't take anything important with you." Her smirk seemed more like a grimace under her streaming tears.

"Okay… uh… May I ask: are you actually fine? You seem pretty upset—anything wrong?" He decided to venture, seeing how leaving someone in such a devastated state after entering his or her house in the middle of the night is rather impolite.

"My brother," she gulped. "He went on a 2-year mission around nineteen months ago, to the land of tea with his wife and well… I used to always receive a letter from him, once a month, about how they're doing. Around six months ago, these letters stopped coming and I'd tell myself: there'll be one next week. I'd tell myself that they're fine, that, of course, they'd be all right—that they had merely reached a difficult phase of the mission and writing a letter would have been of great inconvenience. I should have known better. I kept lying to myself and lying to my nephew, Kagami that they're coming back. He believed me, you know, I felt terrible about lying to him. "

"It's okay."

"What's okay?" She looked back at him and he had almost shied away awkwardly.

"It's okay to lie to him. He's only four, a bit too young to handle the loss. You know, when my mother died—she was killed in a battle with the…. never mind," Tobirama paused, due to the fact that the Uchiha had slaughtered his mother when he was three and revealing that information while consoling a female member of that clan was quite inappropriate. "Anyways, I knew that she was dead, I knew the cause of it. At that time I was too young and I couldn't take it. My brother had cried, he burst into tears the moment he'd hear about that, but I cried harder—I would wake up at night while the rest of my siblings were sound asleep and cry and cry and cry until my eyes were swollen the next day. It took me a long while to come to terms with reality and coming to think of it, I wished my dad had kept it from me just a little longer, just until I was old enough to take it on without crying so hard that my eyes were completely red the next few weeks. I mean, so I guess what I'm trying to say is that, it's okay to lie to him. We don't live in a world where children are sent into battlefields everyday and senselessly slaughtered anymore."

"Oh," she nodded back at him. "I see your point, I mean... yeah, I guess I'll just have to wait until he's old enough. In the meantime, I guess I'll have to bear the loss myself." She stared at the floor, and at her purple bunny slippers. Yes. Tobirama had just noticed that she had purple bunny slippers.

"I'm very sorry for your loss, but I've got to be going," said Tobirama. "I've got piles and piles of Hashirama's paperwork to do. And uh… don't bear the loss alone, it's okay to share these kinds of feelings with other people, I guess."

"Okay. Anyways, thanks for dropping by, I mean you didn't interrupt anything really. I needed someone to talk to," nodded Naori as he left for the door.

"Uh… no problem, I guess," he said, then stepped out into the open, onto the streets of the Uchiha compound and shunshined away.

A/N: Well... I know the tone of this chapter is a tad different from the rest of the story. Please tell me if you loved it? hated it? found it strange? Also, many thanks for sticking to this story and many apologies for the long wait y'all had to go through. Also, please take some time to write a kind little review- you'll make my day :)

Question: What's your ideal ending for this story?

2nd Question: How did y'all find the ending for Naruto?